Bows can be pretty loud. (I've fired one.)
*twang*
*swoosh*
*tha-dunk*
And they take a long time to fire, unless you're an expert.

Never tried a crossbow though.

Apparently there are modern combat crossbows.
Can zombies be poisoned? Maybe a poison tipped repeating crossbow wouldn't be such a terribadTM, ProjektTHOR idea.

Uh, wouldn't work. Also it's a Gatling shotgun thread.

Meh, bows are fast to fire, if you know what you're doing. I'm a pretty fast, accurate shot with a bow, better than I am with a gun.

I've seen it before, so you can laugh or cry or whatever you please.

.22 Rifles are already really quiet, who needs a silencer? I think that's why he was laughing, or maybe it's the fact that you can do more damage with just about anything than you can with a .22. I'd take an aluminum baseball bat over a .22 any day.

putting a silencer (a misnomer) on a cartridge that is likely subsonic (depending on load)

yeah

sure bro

"silencers" work by compressing exhaust gases in order to slow the bullet's exit velocity, making it quieter
esp. in transonic/supersonic rounds

subsonic rounds, they have no effect besides making an already comically slow bullet slower

Suppressors generally don't slow down the bullet. They trap/slow the escaping gases behind it that pushed it and would otherwise cause a louder report when exiting.
Some suppressors increase on the muzzle velocity, acting to some extent as extra barrel length.
Other suppressors that are designed to do so slow down the bullet to get it under supersonic velocity like you said.

Beyond that, .22LR is cheap and in widespread use, probably higher in availability than any other round.
It's very light. 500 rounds, less than five pounds.
It has the power to enter a skull.

If you were sneaking around and taking the zeds by surprise one by one, a suppressed .22LR rifle would be very useful.
But it would be pretty crappy for anything but head shots, assuming they don't feel pain, and head shots are tough when they're already rushing you.

thank you, i was going to bring that up, but i never really intended this to be a "what would you use in a zombie apocalypse thread"
i'm sure there are at least a few already.
and yeah, headshots are hard, but ripping up zombies and then having a bunch of them half apart but still scrambling for you isn't very nice. all or nothing.

i don't care if it takes headshots to kill them

delimbing them is going to cut their mobility drastically enough for my purposes

also, people need to stop considering the zombie survival guide/world war z factual in any way

Yeah, contrary to what they say, I'm pretty sure de-limbing zombies would be effective enough to disable them. Then, you could just curb-stomp them, problem solved. Let's see them bite through the bottom of a boot.

hey, i'd rather leave a delimbed zombie and run, i wouldn't care for a curb stomp. but if i wanted peace of mind when sleeping nearby i would like to know they were killed by a headshot.

wait, are we talking feral running zombies or shambling zombies?

Cool zombies shamble, everyone knows that. And, personally, I would go for the curb stomp, in case they have some means of communication.

point taken. communicating zombies can make a horde pretty quick. i wonder if there would be a much more effective weapon to take them out without harming infrastructure (nuking the area that is infested beyond hopes of prolonged quarantine)... like a sonic weapon.

A way to take them out? I would think, maybe...gas, or something. Some kind of gas that can wear away at tissues would get the job done easily.